


firstborn

by rievu



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, and cate blanchett is too good, because i lov me some family dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24402886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rievu/pseuds/rievu
Summary: Odin regrets many things. Sharpening his firstborn into a knife is only one of the many things he regrets. He gave her every gift, every secret, every treasure he owned. It is a pity that Odin did not realize that he only had violence to give until it was too late.// how hela lives and grows in (and leaves behind) her father's shadow with her brothers
Relationships: Hela & Loki & Thor (Marvel), Hela & Loki (Marvel), Hela & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 107





	firstborn

Odin regrets many things. Sharpening his firstborn into a knife is only one of the many things he regrets.

When she was young, Odin remembers loving his daughter so much that he thought he would die with the force of it. He was so proud of his firstborn: so very,  _ very _ proud. When she wanted a puppy, he brought her a wolf pup forged of fire and shadow. When she was old enough to hold her first weapon, he gave her a hammer carved of lightning and honed with thunder. He gave her every gift, every secret, every treasure he owned. 

It is a pity that Odin did not realize that he only had violence to give until it was too late.

* * *

Hela Odinsdottir’s first battle is bone-shaking. 

She is not allowed to fight on the frontlines —  _ not yet, _ her father whispers,  _ not yet but soon _ — but adrenaline still surges through her bones as she hefts Mjölnir in her small hands. The Valkyries are around her and above her, fighting on their winged horses and wielding their glittering blades, and she can hear her father’s war cry up ahead. Hela raises her hammer and crushes in some idiot’s skull, and adrenaline rattles through her very marrow at the sheer pleasure of it. 

This is what her father spoke of. This is what her father dreams of. This is the business that she, as firstborn, was made for. 

The soil of Muspelheim is hot and fiery under her feet, but she makes do with the boots that her father gave her. The fires cannot compare to the likes of Mjölnir though. Hela raises her hammer high to the skies to call down lightning and thunder. Ozone overwhelms the scent of blood and smoke, and the strength of the storm that she summons makes her feel as though her very bones are quaking.

Then, as the first bolt of lightning recedes, Hela begins to feel something dark and cold within her marrow. She draws upon it without fear. Perhaps this is her seiðr coming in, weaving hard and fast over her skin to protect her from fire and fury. Perhaps this is her own kind of fury. Whatever it is, Hela is not afraid, and she unleashes it with the same kind of childish boldness as she does with Mjölnir. 

Green radiates out from her outstretched hands and coats over her armor. Large, jagged stalagmites of that same green erupt from the ground around her to impale the beasts that come for her with slavering jaws. It’s enough to make the Valkyries around her still, and Hela laughs out loud with sheer delight. It rings out in a shrill bubble that soars over the low roar and rumble of battle. This is  _ wonderful. _ If this is what power feels like, then Hela adores it. 

She leaps forward with a grin still cracking her lips wide open. Fenris is not full-grown yet, he still follows after her with his puppy feet and wagging tail. Hela sends more and more of this strange, new power ahead of her, and she feels delightfully free. Lava and flame don’t melt the strange, rock-like spires that she wrenches from the ground, and Muspelheim begins to creak and heave with the weight of victory that Asgard deals upon them.

One beast stumbles back, and Hela manages to trap it in a triad of her glistening green spires. The rock grows hard and fast and  _ sharp. _ “Asgardian whelp,” it snarls out. “What do you claim to be the god of? What can you possibly do?”

Hela tilts her head to the side and considers the question. “Death,” she decides to say. “Yours.”

She snaps the thread of its life with a flick of her hand. Her blades answer and cuts the beast’s breath short.

By the time the battle is over, Hela is panting. Fenris nudges at her hand with his wet nose. Hela looks down to see that her armor is now completely midnight green — the color of dark, overgrown pools or perhaps the deep evergreen of tundra forests — and she smiles. It’s beautiful.

“Daughter of mine,” she hears. Hela looks over to see Odin come trotting over on Sleipnir. “What have you wrought today?”

Hela smiles. Her cheeks are still round, and she is still small and slight, but she feels more power contained with her frame than she’s ever felt before. “I can make pretty things now,” she says. She stretches her hand out and makes a small, sharp spire of green stone grow from the ground. The lava of Muspelheim slips off it like oil on water, and it glows a dull green. 

Odin smiles at her, and she feels  _ so proud. _ “How does victory feel?” he prompts.

Hela knows the answer, as surely as she can feel it, and replies, “Glorious.”

What she does not know is that there is a small, slight shiver that runs on the back of Odin’s neck when he hears her answer. She will not know what it is nor what it means until it is too late.

* * *

Hela is older now, and battles no longer feel bone-shaking but rather, exhilarating. 

She trains with the Valkyries instead of watching them ride on their glittering white steeds, and she is on the frontlines now. She rides on Fenris’ back when she goes into battle, and her father rides alongside her on Sleipnir. Hela doesn’t use Mjölnir nearly as much as she uses blades wrought from her own magic.

They call her Odin’s executioner. She has no issue with the title. It is her talent, and it is the only thing that she can give to him along with the rest of the worlds that she conquers. She takes world after world and wraps them up in her familiar green darkness for her father. Her gifts may be stained with some blood and fire here and there, but that’s the only type of gift that she’s ever learned to receive and to give.

They call her the goddess of death. It reminds her of Muspelheim sometimes: of that beast and when she first decided what her talent was. They call her devastation, death, fury, and Hela concedes to that. She is not peace nor justice. She is Odin’s firstborn, and she is her father’s image in every aspect. If anything, it reflects more upon her father.

But one day, Odin lays a hand on her shoulder when she surges forward to snap another life between her fingers. “Hold,” he says softly. Hela looks back at her father, and a strange look crosses his face. Odin Borson looks far older than he ever has before, and across his expression, there is a veneer of bitterness hiding something else that she can’t quite figure out. “Hold,” he repeats. “They do not have to die for us to take this world.”

Hela looks out at this pitiful creature in front of her, barely alive and barely breathing. “You have leveled villages, towns, cities,” she says. “And now, a small creature barely worth the breath it takes from the air is what stops you in your tracks?”

“It is for the good of this world,” Odin replies. His voice is steady, but something flickers in his hollow eyes. Hela cannot see the brutal whims and raven-black lethality that was once there. “Leave it be, Hela.”

Hela frowns but pulls back ever so reluctantly. She lets the thing fall to the ground hard enough to hear the snap of some of its bones, but she returns to her father’s side. “What brought this on?” she asks, pressing at the topic insistently. 

Odin mounts Sleipnir and begins to return back to their troops without a reply. Ravens fly overhead, circling over the battlefield. Hela glances back to see the battlefield sufficiently devastated. There are large, jutting spires of green rock across the battlefield and large divots in the ground where Fenris leaped off of. There are bodies that are crumpled and bloody, and there are the victors, regrouping together on their side of the field. Hela reluctantly follows after Odin, but she feels like something in the balance of things has distinctly shifted.

The lost sense of equilibrium continues. 

Odin begins to court Frigga — golden Frigga who sits at her loom and spindle to weave seiðr rather than to fight — and begins to remain in Asgard far more than he used to. He no longer goes out to battle, and Hela, her troops, and the Valkyries remain in the training grounds. Hela itches for something to do, but when she prompts her father, the only answer she gets is “soon.”

Asgard begins renovations. At first, there are small things. There is a fountain in a place where she does not notice. They replace grey granite with smooth, white marble. Then, they begin to paint different kinds of murals and paintings: idyllic gardens and joyous festivities instead of the glory and sacrifice of battle. They stop painting shadows and begin to paint sunlight.

One day, Hela loses her patience and gathers her things. She laces her armor on and seals the cracks with her green shadows. Fenris pads out and awaits her by the bridge, and Hela begins to assemble her troops.

Heimdall watches her with golden eyes and asks, “Has the All-Father given the order?”

“I am my father’s general and executioner,” Hela returns. “I have equal say in every battle and war that we wage. I will give him the Nine Realms as he has always wanted, so open the path, Gatekeeper.”

Heimdall regards her with a level gaze, and the gold of his eyes seems to sear into her. Hela narrows her eyes at the gatekeeper. He has never feared her, unlike some other Asgardians, which raises her own esteem and respect for him but also brings the question of whether or not he will obey. He has never been anything but loyal to Odin, but she does not know if that loyalty extends to his children.

“Gatekeeper,” Hela repeats. “open the path. I must point our armies to the right path.”

“Is this the path that Odin Borson, the All-Father, has ordered?” Heimdall asks again. His voice is just as even and strong as Hela’s own, but now, Hela’s temper begins to lick up and rise higher. She has spent far too much time in idleness to be stopped by a single man at a bridge.

She’s stopped from having to say anything more though because Odin’s voice cuts clear through the tension as he calls out, “Hela. Heimdall.”

Hela and Heimdall turn to look at Odin, and they both salute him. Odin is not dressed in armor, but instead, he is wearing soft wool and cotton, sewn over with gilded thread. Frigga’s work, no doubt. Hela’s lip curls at the sight of it. Odin comes over to her and asks, “My dear daughter, what are you doing at the Bifrost Bridge?” He looks over at her soldiers that she’s assembled — Asgardians that have and would follow her to the ends of the Realms — and sighs, “Do you intend to wage another war?”

“It is the same work that we have been doing, have we not?” Hela returns. “Rather than sitting idle, it would be better for us to maintain our momentum. Let me pass through, Father, and I will bring you back another star and its worlds.”

Odin wavers. Hela can see it, bright as day, and she does not know if it is temptation from having another world or something else. Either way, it is  _ weak. _ She has never seen her father become so weak and sniveling before, and she doesn’t know what to do with this paradoxical thing. Perhaps weakness is not the right term. Perhaps it is satisfaction. Odin Borson was never known for being satisfied. No, Odin — the Allfather who paid his own eye for his own selfish desire to know more, more,  _ more  _ — could never be called anything like that. 

Hela understands. She is, after all, his firstborn, and she knows that kind of all-consuming greed like nothing else. That is why this new development is so incendiary. She knows Odin’s greed. He lovingly carved that into her bones, and now, she knows it almost as much as he does. 

Perhaps this is the secret. Perhaps Odin Borson is no longer satisfied with what Hela can give him. That would make more sense in the grand scheme of things.

The only problem is this. Hela does not know how to give him anything more than what he taught her to do.

* * *

So, Hela does what Hela does best.

Death.

She lays waste to any world she can, crushes and subjugates them, feeds them to Fenris, and leads the few still loyal to her into battle. She waters the soil with blood and her own bitterness, and when Odin arrives to stop her, she is already in her prime.

He rides astride Sleipnir and holds Gungnir in his hand. His cloak flutters over his shoulders, and Huginn and Muninn circle over his head, crying out their harsh croaks that dissipate in the thin air. Odin looks more ancient than he ever has to Hela: not in his face but rather, in the way his mouth is set into a thin, firm line that Hela knows to be unshakeable.

Odin calls this love. Hela calls this abandonment.

So, Hela fights. She fights with as much strength as she can muster up, and she whets the edge of her blades with her own sense of betrayal. Odin does not hesitate when he raises Gungnir up high in the air and brings it down upon her. Her blood begins to water the soil of Asgard, but she cannot die as long as Asgard stands. Odin knows this as well, and still, he does not stop. 

She no longer faces her father — if he could even deserve the title of  _ father _ now — and now faces the King of Asgard. In the end, it is the King of Asgard who pins her down to the ground with the weight of Gungnir and his own magic rather than her own father.

“What changed you?” Hela snaps. She claws her hands deep into the dirt — curls them in so hard that soil lodges underneath the crescents of her fingernails and the lines of her palms — and heaves herself to demand, “What happened to Odin the Mighty, the Spear Master, the Battle Wolf of Asgard? What made you soft and weak, Father?” A bitter laugh escapes her. “Or have I disappointed you? Do you throw the blood of your blood away so easily?

Odin’s eyes look frost-pale and hollow as he quietly says, “I will never love another child of mine as much as I have loved you.”

“And what good has your love ever done me?” Hela bites out.

“My firstborn,” he murmurs softly. The pitch of his voice does not change the volumes of his words, and Hela despises him for it. “My Hela,” he whispers now, barely above a single breath.

Hela tries to rise up to her feet, but the strength of Odin’s seiðr keeps her on her knees. As if she was nothing more than a beggar or another enemy at his feet. So, she pours as much fury into her voice as she can as she hisses, “Don’t speak to me as if you care about me. You know what you’ve done, and no matter how much you try to hide it, the truth of what we’ve done to achieve what you have now will never change.” A mirthless grin cracks her lips open and bares her teeth to the cold air. “You bought your riches using  _ me.  _ Never forget that.”

Then, she falls, over and over again, past Asgard and past the many branches of Yggdrasil until she lands in Niflheim. Perhaps the most maddening thing of all is that Odin makes himself the tumblers to the lock of Hela’s cage. If Odin ever truly cared, then he would have the  _ mercy _ and the  _ grace _ to just end it all, to snap her seiðr with an inglorious cut, to water Asgard’s soil with her blood. Hela thinks about the words,  _ mercy _ and  _ grace, _ with the same kind of vitriol and spite that she does with her father’s name now.

Another infuriating thing is that Odin cares only enough to make her eternal prison a semblance of Asgard. Mist never leaves this place and constantly coats it over with a sheen of grey, but the general structure reminds her of Asgard. It is no round world like Midgard is, and if she runs to the edge of the world, she can see the stars glittering in the cosmos around Yggdrasil. There are craggy mountains and clouds that hang low in the skies. Rivers carve through the land, and Odin’s favored birds — wretched ravens that croak and cough constantly — fly through the air. She treks through her jail long enough to know all the major parts which she can count on a single hand. 

Sometimes, if she is feeling particularly cruel to herself, she’ll trek over to a spring that bubbles around the knotted, curled roots of Yggdrasil.  _ Hvergelmir _ — as she decides to call it — is a boiling, bubbling spring that feeds almost every river in this wretched place. Sometimes,  _ sometimes, _ she can peer into the spring and see glimpses of other worlds between the borders of the waters and the roots. She hates every glimpse she sees though.

Asgard is golden and white, and to a stranger’s eyes, it would look pure and untouched. She supposes that Odin probably married Frigga by now. After all, they were courting when Hela was still there, and now that his reminder of his first wife is gone, he would be perfectly free to marry whoever he liked blissfully. Odin always did like to construct his little ignorances no matter how glaringly obvious they were. The thought of him marrying golden,  _ perfect _ Frigga makes her rankle, but she forces herself to move on.

Hela squints at the small sliver of Asgard that she can see past the bubbling water and thinks she can hear the brief strains of music. They sing different songs there now — songs of peace and joy — but Hela knows what kinds of songs they used to sing. She knows the lyrics and the harsh, keening cries of what they used to be. Instead of floating, ethereal melodies, they used to pound against drums made of stretched hide and sing loud enough to shake the World Tree itself. War, death, blood, executions, victory, burdens of glorious purpose. That is what they used to sing. 

Hela stops looking at the spring after that.

* * *

Millennia pass. Time moves on without Hela.

She waits and watches and hates and loves and hates again and again and again.

Millennia pass. Hela does not move on.

* * *

When Hela finally feels the lock on her prison turn, she knows that Odin must be dying. Still, she arrives a touch too late. The gold dust that was once Odin’s is now scattering on the wind, and all the dreams she’s had for millennia of staining his blood on her swords is gone. Patricide is no longer an option for her. It is a shame, but she has no interest in listening to the platitudes that Odin would likely offer up. 

Midgard’s soil feels loose and soft under her heels as she stalks towards her younger brothers. One reeks of ozone and the gilt that coats over Asgard and the other one smells like permafrost. 

She recognizes the second scent — the smaller pale slip of a thing — from when she once rained down blood and fire in Jotunheim. Hela doesn’t  _ want _ to admit it, but when she looks at Loki’s face, she sees her own features staring back at her. The color of her hair, the brightness of her eyes, the slant of her stark cheekbones, the green of his clothing, the paleness of her skin. Odin’s sheer  _ gall _ to make this frost whelp’s Asgardian guise  _ like her _ makes her blood boil. It serves as another sign of her father’s infuriating softness, and she hates it.

She sees Mjölnir in the hands of her golden-haired brother who has more Frigga than Odin in his appearance, and the same bitterness suffuses her. It appears as though Odin passed her belongings down to his next son. Both are replacements for her, it seems.

Odin’s voice echoes in the back of her mind in an old and distant memory.  _ I will never love another child of mine as much as I have loved you.  _ Hela stamps down on that memory forcefully. Odin’s love was never worth much in the end. She doesn't care. At the very least, she will spend the rest of her years telling herself that until the message sinks into her marrow.

Regardless of what they look like, they both reek of Odin and have his influence hanging off their shoulders like heavy weights. Thor looks more like Frigga than Odin, but the way he lifts his chin or holds himself is Odin through and through. Both of them look confused at the sight of her, and now, Hela realizes that Odin must have covered up his mistakes. 

“Does no one remember me? Has no one been taught our history?” she sneers. “Look at these lies. Goblets and garden parties? Peace treaties?  _ Odin.” _ She spits out the name as if it were a curse. Thor flinches, but Loki looks at her with his darting eyes. Hela knows the sight of one who has been slighted by Odin as well. It seems as though Odin never learned how to be a good father. She lifts her chin and continues, “Proud to have it, ashamed of how he got it.”

“Father wasn’t like that,” Thor says. He looks a touch unsteady as he says it, and her other brother looks far from disbelieving. 

Hela laughs bitterly. “You think Father ever cared about anything or anyone else other than his own glory? He told me he loved me and then cast me out, pretended like I never existed, and moved on with his life. Has he not done the same to you?” she asks. Both Thor and Loki look sufficiently cowed. She’s not surprised that Odin has repeated his mistakes. For all his wisdom and knowledge, their father was never a good one. 

Hela says, “Now, kneel before your queen. I am firstborn and next in line for the throne.” Her birthright. What was promised to her so long ago and then easily forgotten in favor of a golden son. How abhorrent. 

Hela summons up two more blades before she stalks towards her brothers. It feels good to be doing what she does best again.

But taking Asgard doesn’t feel quite as exultant as Hela pictured it would be. Yes, her brothers get away, and she’s not a fan of leaving loose ends. But she has the throne. She dreamed of this moment for so many years that dripped into centuries that then dripped into however long it truly was. She’s Asgardian; time feels like nothing to the divine.

Hela tears down each and every single thing that Odin commissioned to hide his bloodied past. For a brief moment, the destruction fills her with blind glee, but then, she’s left to look at the rubble. The image of her painted face beside Odin’s — the same eyes, the same hands raised in victory — makes her feel something strange, as if something was curdling at the bottom of her heart. 

She reclines on the throne and realizes that the throne is cold and bare. Nothing as how she imagined it. Her irritation spikes, so she hurls a jagged blade to lodge firmly in Odin’s face. Then, she leans back and shuts her eyes. 

The truth remains what it was for so many years. And the truth is that she would’ve given him everything that she could — death, blood, blades, worlds subjugated at his feet — but at some point, Odin no longer wanted what she had to give. She never learned how to give anything else other than that. 

So, she does what Odin taught her to do during her brief reign: destroy.

* * *

Eventually, things wind down, and Surtur spreads fire and fury across her Asgard. The fire reminds her of Muspelheim, and the soot and ash stings her eyes. Her brothers are on one side of the bridge with the rest of Asgard, and the fires of her childhood rages on the other side.

Her brother — just as stupid and perfect and golden as Frigga — stands still and silent for once, staring at her with one eye just like Odin did once upon a time. Hela’s lip curls at the sight; she can never escape him even now. She suspects that he’ll take his leave and let her burn with the rest of Asgard. Another prison in exchange for the previous one.

She’s startled when Thor stretches out a hand and says, “Join us, sister. You can come with us.”

“So, dear brother of mine, what do you plan to do with another wayward sibling?” Hela hears Loki say. 

She looks up at him with lidded eyes and tries to struggle towards him. But as Asgard burns, she feels the same fire burn through her marrow. She was born of Asgard, and although she could live without her home, it still feels as though something dear and close was being torn out from her chest. Hela can’t muster up more than two blades from her outstretched hand, but Heimdall is there to block them with an easy swing of his blade.

Heimdall — older than her brothers by an eternity and with golden eyes that had seen far too much — looks at her with a mixture of pity and sadness. Hela expects the latter but does not expect the former. 

“I…” Thor trails off.

Loki looks over at Hela and sighs, “How easily our father ruins us.”

Thor flinches from Loki’s words, but it makes Hela pause. She eyes Loki carefully before she settles back down and lets her magic return to her fingertips. It seems as this brother of hers has endured much of the same by her father’s hand. Hela isn’t surprised; Loki is entirely correct. That is precisely the thing that makes Hela pause. Not for Thor’s transparent and misguided kindness, not for any lingering, measly sentiment from Brunhilde (who is clearly looking at her with more hatred than any of the three), and not for Heimdall and his bitter-golden pity. For Loki’s brutal honesty which is strange coming out of the mouth of someone who lies so easily.

Instead of stabbing her idiot brothers through their chests, Hela settles for watching Asgard burn behind her and feels like she’s withering into ashes with it. “Yes, how Odin has ruined us,” she echoes. “And ruined Asgard with it.”

“You are not our father,” Loki says crisply. “Neither am I and neither is Thor.” He grimaces a little bit. “I am unaccustomed to this brand of redemption, but I suppose if we are to extend it, then I should admit that at the very least. Besides, I would hate to be Odin all over again. Would you?”

“No,” Hela spits out. But she gets up. Looks at the fires behind her. Looks at the blade in her hand. Looks at the shades of Odin left ingrained in her.

And she throws the blade into the fire and takes a step towards her brothers. 

* * *

They keep her in a holding cell under constant lock and guard. Every Asgardian treats her with fear and contempt. She does the same to them regarding the latter.

But Loki and Thor visit her. 

Thor’s visits are more infrequent, but Hela finds the spark of charitable kindness in him rather infuriating. He is Frigga’s son down to the core. If anything, he is lucky to have such few streaks of Odin in him. Of course, there are similarities. When Hela looks at his ruined eye, she is distinctly reminded of Odin.

(She is mildly horrified to think about her own actions leaving marks of Odin on others. But the truth is that she is her father’s firstborn, and it feels like a fact that she can never escape from.)

Hela has little to tell him, but when Thor asks her why she wanted Asgard so badly, she levels her gaze at him and says, “You do not know what it is like to be promised everything and then to be denied it all. No matter what lies Odin fed you at your birth, the fact remains that you were not born first, Thor Odinson.”

Loki’s visits are far more frequent, and instead of the puppy smile that Thor has, he has a distinct waspishness to his tone that Hela understands far more. It takes one to know one, and when she looks at Loki, she sees that there are more than the guise that Odin slapped onto his skin. 

“So, sister of mine,” he drawls. “It seems we have attempts at coups in common between us. Do you think we got that from our mother or our father?”

“Don’t ask me questions that you already know the answer to, arrogant boy,” Hela returns.

Loki merely laughs. “It seems we have arrogance in common as well. Probably from Father as well.”

Hela eyes her brother and wonders if it’s too late to stab him in the gut.

He sits down opposite from her and shrugs as he says, “I tried to steal the throne from Thor, brought the armies of the Chitauri to Midgard and attempted to kill his friends, and even tried to backstab him on Sakaar.”

“Merely that?” Hela scoffs. “I killed more within the span of an hour, crushed worlds underneath my feet, fed civilizations to Fenris without a second thought.” Her heart twinges when she thinks of Fenris, likely burnt to ashes and cinders in Surtur’s fire. Her loyal pup, twice dead. She looks up at Loki and sees the small note of surprise in his eyes. Damn him; her brief moment of sorrow was not for her actions. She isn’t sorry for what she’s done. She never was.

“Good for you,” Loki says. “But the point is that the idiot still forgives me. The same goes for my mother. They would both do the same for you. Father… I am not quite so sure. He didn’t, at least, not that I can personally believe.”

Oh, this is infuriating. Hela looks at Loki and wants to scream from the sheer irritation of it all. He had everything: a prince’s title, a golden Asgard, and that pitiful,  _ miserable _ thing called  _ love _ from his perfect fucking family. And  _ still _ , he turned his back on it and decided to do a measly attempt at teenage rebellion. She served Odin for so long and never turned on him until he turned on her first. 

Hela seethes, and Loki gives her a sliver of a smile. He knows her fury, and although he cannot dare to compare his to hers, the gazes that they exchange are that of people who have been wronged by their families. But Loki is softer, made gentle with Frigga’s hands and Thor’s love. Hela only had Odin. 

Later, Loki comes around again. He does not appear, but Hela raises her head and says, “I know you’re there. Don’t bother hiding.”

He flickers into view and settles the threads of his magic around him. “Good sight,” he comments.

“It is not difficult to see a measly illusion,” Hela grouses. Loki’s lips twist into something close to resembling the look of a whining child, and she narrows her eyes at him. “No whining,” she says.

“Of course, sister, of course,” Loki says with overexaggerated respect. He even gives her a flourishing bow, and it takes so much effort from Hela to not stab him where he stands. She’s not sure when she started to hesitate before her murderous thoughts. Truly, she’s walking down the same path that Odin did, and she hates every minute of it.

Instead, she settles on asking, “So, what have you come here for?”

“The sheer pleasure of bothering you, sister dear,” Loki tells her. “Consider it your welcome to the family.”

Hela rolls her eyes and says, “I have been family from the very beginning, whelp. If anything, you’re the late one.”

“Fashionably late, if anything,” Loki returns without even a missed beat.

Well, not if Hela has anything to do about it. She musters up her energy — still sapped from the burning of Asgard — and sneers, “You were nothing more than a pale slip of a thing, plucked up to be Odin’s tokenized poster boy for peace.” 

Something shivers in the dark pupils of Loki’s eyes, and Hela relishes in it. Loki crosses his arms and says, “You don’t hold back, do you?”

Now, it is Hela’s turn to smile and say, “Never.”

“Then why haven’t you killed us all?” Loki challenges. He leans forward, and the same color of her own eyes gleam back at her. “Asgard may have burned, but you’re still capable of wreaking enough destruction and death for yourself on this ship.”

“Perhaps I wish to take a try at, what did you call it,  _ misguided redemption,” _ Hela snorts.

Loki tuts, “Not quite. I simply said that it wasn’t my particular brand of redemption. Not misguided; that’s for Thor to decide.” He gets up to leave, and the illusion makes his form flicker in and out of sight. 

“And sister, do be better with your lies. I  _ am _ the god of mischief.”

* * *

“Hela Odinsdottir.”

Hela raises her head and wonders what she’s done to earn herself constant thorns in her side. “Heimdall,” she says flatly. 

Heimdall inclines his head, but Hela sees his sword in his sheath on his belt. He came prepared. Good. She would’ve thought lesser of him had he not.

“I came to speak with you,” Heimdall begins. He keeps one hand at his side, right by the pommel of his blade, but with the other, he gestures to Hela and says, “Specifically, about your current predicament.”

Hela bares her teeth in a semblance of a smile and says, “Why, Heimdall? Do you worry that I will slaughter your precious people?”

Heimdall looks at her sadly — which confuses her — and softly says, “They are your people too, Hela. But the answer to your question is a yes and a no. You have forsaken them when you decided to kill them blindly in your rage.”

Hela stiffens, and now, her smile morphs into a snarl. “Rage well deserved,” she spits out. “I was firstborn out of Odin’s children, and he denied me my own birthright.”

“Because he saw what he had wrought,” Heimdall replies. Hela hates him for how he looks so calm and placid still, even in the face of her anger. That part of him hasn’t changed throughout these years and during her banishment.

“Tell me, Heimdall,” she bites out. “Would you agree with Odin in regards to my exile?”

She fully expects a denial from Heimdall, but he sidesteps the question by saying, “In the millennia that I have served Odin, I have not gone against his judgement.”

Hela narrows her eyes and glares at him. “I am not doubting your loyalty to my miserable, sniveling father. I am asking you for your own opinion,” she says. Her voice drops to a low, dangerous tone. “Unless, your own thoughts and opinion has been eroded away and replaced with blind servility?”

He shakes his head. “Servility does not necessarily mean loyalty, and vice versa. I believe that you were dangerous, that you still are, and that you were making poor choices for the longevity of Asgard,” Heimdall says. Each word is slow and careful, as if they were weights dropping off his tongue, and each one makes Hela bristle. But Heimdall continues, “But, I do think that Odin made a grave error in the business of raising children. His love blinded him as did yours.”

“I have no love for Odin Borson,” Hela snarls.

“You do,” Heimdall says simply. “You loved your father so much that you did not see how much you bled for it. As for Odin, he never loved another child the way he loved you, Hela Odinsdottir.”

“Lies.”

Heimdall does not waver, not in the slightest, and he levels his golden gaze at Hela. “It is the truth,” he says. “He never loved another child with violence like the way he did with you.”

Hela stands up now, joints creaking from so many days of disuse, but Heimdall’s hand does not go to his pommel. Not yet. But Hela takes a step forward and sharply gestures to the door of her holding cell. “But look how the rest of his children turned out,” she snaps. “One with an undying stupidity and softness for the weak lives of mortals and another plucked up from the snows of Jotunheim that stabbed him in the back as many times as he wished. Blood runs thicker than water, Heimdall, and he has tainted us all.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” he murmurs. “Will you let that blood define you then? Will you let yourself be defined by nothing but Odin for the rest of your life?”

There is silence, and Hela has no words. Instead, she settles on furiously glaring at Heimdall.

As for Heimdall, he inclines his head and says, “I apologize if I overstep my boundaries with my assumptions, but I think if you decided to continue living like that, then you would’ve painted this entire ship with blood. I see I have the answer that I was looking for. Good day, Hela Odinsdottir.”

He takes his leave, and Hela is left with only the sound of the door shutting. The damage from the burning of Asgard still remains deep in her bones and marrow, and she can’t muster up the same bladed fury that she normally would. A few chips of dark-green obsidian coat over her nails and knuckles though, and Heimdall’s words rattle around and around in her head.

* * *

“How did Father love you?” Hela abruptly asks. 

Thor blinks at the sudden question, and Hela wants to punch her brother in the face for how foolish he is. A puppy-like, golden-haired dunce, her brother is. He shrugs and says, “Well, Father rarely said the words, not like Mother did, but I knew anyways. He was stern, enforced the law, all that, but he was good to us.”

Thor lapses into silence, and in the brief moment of brooding, he looks so much like their father. He chuckles, almost bitterly, to himself and says, “Just before my coronation, the Jotuns came to get their Casket of Ancient Winters back. I wanted to attack Jotunheim, but Father forbade it.”

“And you did it anyways,” Hela says. “As I would have.” Perhaps that is their familial trait coming through. 

Thor raises a brow at that but he nods. “I did, and Loki, Sif, Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun all came with me to do it,” he says. “We fought and fought until Odin came to save my sorry ass. It destroyed the brief peace we had between Asgard and Jotunheim, and he hurled me to Midgard with nothing but Mjölnir.”

“Father has a habit of hurling his children elsewhere when he doesn’t want to deal with them,” Hela comments.

Thor wrinkles his nose. “He was good in some ways,” he insists. “He was right; I wasn’t ready to be king, I wasn’t ready to rule. I was hotheaded, and I destroyed the peace between our two people.” 

Hela levels a  _ look _ at him, and Thor huffs out, “Alright, alright, Father wasn’t perfect, I’ll give you that. But I knew he loved me. I knew that he cared. He was a good king — “

“But not a good father,” Hela finally says. 

“Sister, why do you ask?” Thor returns. 

Hela shuts her eyes and thinks about the times that her father told her that he loved her. He told her when he handed her a little puppy made of darkness and fire, when he gave her the first weapon she ever owned, when he gave her gifts of knives and sacrifices and victories and treasures that they plundered.

Heimdall’s voice echoes,  _ He never loved another child with violence like the way he did with you. _

Now, Hela can’t tell if that was meant to be a good or bad thing.

“Nothing,” she finally says. 

Thor gives her a wary look but shrugs and carries on. Hela does not.

* * *

Loki asks her what she wants to do one day.

Hela counts her limited options and decides to say, “Fight.” Her body is aching for one. She sharpened into a knife oh so long ago, and the feeling of her body being dulled with disuse makes her feel heavy.

Loki shrugs and says, “Alright. Teach me how to fight then, sister dear.”

Hela blinks at her odd brother, but she refuses to miss the opportunity. Together, they spar, and Hela forces her limbs and her joints to go through the same motions that she trained them so diligently in. And she trains Loki like she would any other. She trained the Valkyrie once; she is no stranger to being a trainer. 

Thor and Brunhilde walk in on them once, and Brunhilde moves without thinking. Hela has a blade’s edge to her throat despite the wooden sparring sword she holds in her hands, and she looks at the dilated fury in Brunhilde’s eyes. Loki is first to call out, “It’s fine. I asked her to train me.”

Brunhilde does not move the sword from Hela’s throat and hisses, “She’d take any opportunity to kill us all. She’s the goddess of death. You can’t escape your own nature so easily.”

“Valkyrie,” Thor says in an attempt at a soothing voice. “Put the sword down. Loki says that it was fine.”

“Is it?” Brunhilde repeats. She presses the edge of the sword closer against Hela’s throat, and a small bead of blood wells up from the paper-thin cut on Hela’s skin. Hela’s gaze wanders from Brunhilde’s eyes to her hands. Brunhilde still holds her sword the way that Hela taught the Valkyrie millennia ago, but her hands are white-knuckled with anger. Hela doesn’t fault her for it; she  _ did _ kill all of Brunhilde’s sisters-in-arms. Anger is good for you for battle anyways, makes you sharp and broken and shattered and determined to land the killing blow. 

Finally, Brunhilde retreats, folding into herself with each step she takes back, until she is nothing more than cold and impassive Valkyrie. “Thank you,” Thor tells her, but Brunhilde brushes past him without another word.

Loki watches Brunhilde leave before looking back at Hela and shrugging. He gets back into his stance and beckons Hela over. “Once more,” he says. “Let’s get this training set over with.”

Thor gapes at them, but Hela can only laugh. The sound is foreign to her own ears now, and it seems to startle her brothers too. “You make it sound as if you would win this time,” she says. But she returns. 

* * *

One day, after training, Hela sits down and stares at the ceiling of her cell. Her body is drenched with sweat, and she feels limber and flexible again. Loki has already taken his leave, and he gloated about his meager victory before he left. Hela allowed him one word before she retorted back with something scathing and waspish.

Now she’s alone in her cell again.

Hela finds that she is mildly, ever so slightly, vaguely, oh so  _ faintly _ lonely.

* * *

Loki greets her by saying, “You look particularly ugly today, sister.”

Hela gives Loki a withering smile as she says, “Why, dear brother, I was just about to tell you how greasy and pale you look today.”

Loki’s lips curve into that trickster smile of his, and he sits down cross-legged opposite from Hela. 

Hela props her chin up on her hand and drawls, “Tell me, brother. Why don’t you try to stage another coup? We are on a ship, and it is easy enough to garrote our other brother or strangle him in his sleep to take his crown.”

It’s not a new conversation by any means, and Loki shrugs, “I’ve tried before. It’s not quite as fun to rule as I originally thought it would.” He stretches a hand out to weave some illusion magic into the semblance of Thor as he continues, “Besides, the bastard would probably find some way to inexplicably survive and then make his way back over to us with his big smile and ask us why we did it before punching us with lightning and bringing us back to the fold.”

“You make it so transparently clear that you love him,” Hela says dryly.

Loki’s response is a simple one: “He is my brother.” Again, that infuriating trickster smile of his dances around the corner of his lips as he asks, “Why don’t you?”

Hela lapses into an irritable silence, and Loki laughs, “And you make it so transparently clear that you, on some level, care. Don’t worry, you don’t have to lie about it. It would be a waste of breath in all honesty.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about it,” Hela insists.

“Tut tut, what did I just say?” Loki teases. “Hm, but yes, Thor, that big lump, would find some way to  _ forgive _ us. Well, he’d find some way to tease us and be horribly infuriating about it, but he’d do it.”

“What about you?” Hela now asks.

Loki raises a brow and repeats, “What about me?”

Hela leans in closer and studies her brother. His posture is slack and loose, and he wears no armor. It would be so easy to kill him right now. All it would take is a wave of her hand to summon a blade to snap the thread of his life short. So, she tells him, “What if I stabbed you right now and drained the life-blood out of you.”

By this point, Loki looks rather unimpressed with her threat and says, “I’m the youngest; you have very little to gain from it.”

“And I am firstborn, so I have the natural birthright to the throne,” Hela retorts.

“Even more reason why you wouldn’t attack me,” Loki laughs. “I would have to kill both you and Thor to get the throne, which is a bother. I would just feel terribly bad for killing Thor because it would be like killing a puppy, and killing you would be a greater bother than what it’s worth.”

Hela gives Loki an appraising glance and says, “For once, you’re rather rational.”

“For once?”

Hela rolls her eyes and says, “Brother, you have a tendency to err on the side of stupid.”

“Perhaps, but I am not quite my father’s son,” Loki concedes. He eyes Hela carefully, and he drums his long fingers against his thighs as he thinks about his next words. “As of this moment, I have no wish to rule. Do you?” he finally says.

Hela finds that she only has one answer and says, “I am our father’s daughter.”

“You do not have to be defined by it,” Loki points out. His smile turns bitter. “I spent so much effort trying to curry our father’s favor, betrayed him and my brother and my mother to do so, and killed thousands to do so. Oh, I’m still going to have my damn fun where I can, but with Father being dead and all, I think I’m done trying to gain the approval of a dead man.”

Her brother dances so easily on a fault line of the dark side and redemption, and Hela cannot fathom how he manages to do it. She sees things in such clearly defined shades of black and white. Crushing worlds and watering the soil with blood were simple normalities to her, and Odin’s sudden change was something bewildering and strange and infuriating. But her brother? He deftly steps around them and mischievously wanders in and out of that thin,  _ thin _ line.

“So, sister,” Loki presses. “Are you going to continue to be our father’s daughter or are you going to be something else?”

Hela straightens her shoulders and says coldly, “I am Hela Odinsdottir, firstborn to Odin Borson.”

“That is not my question,” Loki merely says.

Hela looks at her brother. He snivels and whines and teases and lies, but right now, she knows her brother well enough to know when he is telling one of his trickster tales or, more rarely, when he is telling the unadulterated truth.

“I am Hela,” she repeats. With a sense of finality, she drops the title of firstborn and instead, she says more firmly, “I am Hela, goddess of death and of Asgard.”

Her brother smiles at her and gets up to open the door to her cell. It swings wide open, and Loki makes no effort to bar her way out. “Well then, sister, let us join our brother and the rest of Asgard,” he says. “Dinner’s waiting.”

Hela stands up, and although it isn’t all the weight by any means, she feels slightly lighter than she did before. She takes a step towards her brother, a step out of her cell, and a step out of her father’s looming shadow.

**Author's Note:**

> i like the idea of hela, thor, and loki being a set of squabbling siblings and also i think odin's a shitty dad lmao


End file.
